


Happy Birthday, Harry

by StolenMidnightKisses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Cute, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Good Tom Riddle, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry Potter's Birthday, Heavy Angst, Horcrux Hunting, Horcruxes, M/M, Possessive Tom Riddle, Protective Harry Potter, Sane Tom Riddle, Second War with Voldemort, Teenage Tom Riddle, Unfulfilled Love, Young Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 11:05:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenMidnightKisses/pseuds/StolenMidnightKisses
Summary: In which the only comfort Harry knows is a mysterious boy from the 1940s who only appears once a year to say Happy Birthday, Horcrux Riddle is confused, and Voldemort is even more confused.





	Happy Birthday, Harry

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, this is a little idea that woke me up at 2 am and refused to let me go until I'd written it :) Enjoy!

"Happy Birthday"  
  
Harry Potter was two today. But the young child didn't know that. He didn't even know what a birthday was and why he should be happy about it given the fact that he was cold and hungry and his nappy weighed him down uncomfortably as he gripped the edge of his crib. He had a passing thought if wishing for the woman to come and change it but decided against it because she looked weird and cold and nothing like the smiling green-eyed woman he sometimes dreamed about.  
  
He gazed out from the crib and towards the corner of the cupboard where the voice was originating from. There stood a young child no older than 12 wearing funny clothes and with oddly slicked back hair that Harry wanted to touch to see how it felt. He reached out eagerly, his tiny chubby hands making grabbing motions as he gurgled out in happiness, despite the late hour.  
  
The boy stayed there and Harry frowned in upset and reached out again more forcefully, except, as young children tend to do, he miscalculated and with comically wide eyes Harry felt himself pitch off the edge of his cot. Instead of feeling the cold, hard floor he was expecting, Harry was enveloped in a pair of arms and found himself looking at a pair of blue-grey eyes that he didn't think he could ever forget.  
  
The moment was lost when he found himself back in his crib. Disoriented for a moment, he looked up after a few seconds he looked up only to find the boy gone. The only things left was the colour of blue-grey and words still softly echoing: happy birthday.  
  
***  
"Happy Birthday"  
  
Harry was 5 and he had just been sent to the cupboard with no food or water, even after working all day in the garden in the sun. He felt his joints seize and his clothes crinkle with dried sweat as he turned around and gazed at the blue-grey eyed boy that was there for him on his every birthday he could remember, even when no one else was. Once when Harry had been particularly upset he had somehow turned the Dursleys wallpaper the same shade as the boys' eyes and he had instantly calmed down. Of course, the Dursleys had  _not_  been amused.  
  
Harry stared at the boy Infront of him curiously, knowing that despite whatever questions Harry would ask, the boy would remain silent. The only words He ever said were 'Happy Birthday', but that didn't matter to Harry. The only thing that mattered was that he wasn't alone.  
  
So Harry lay in bed and looked at the boy as the boy looked at him and Harry wondered why he thought he remembered the boy embracing him once. But surely that had never happened, for who would want to touch him, a freak?  
  
When Harry woke up the next morning, he wasn't hungry or thirsty and had a new set of clothes that fit him on his bedside, neatly folded below his glasses. He suddenly felt less alone.  
  
***  
"Happy Birthday"  
  
A nine-year-olds shoulders shook with grief. His shoulder was still painfully dislocated and the remains of his glasses hung off his right ear. Several pieces of glass were still embedded in his face.  
  
A drunk Vernon Dursley had come home from the bar and without Petunia to calm him down, he had ranted to Harry about how horrible Harry's parents were and how they had died drunk in a car crash.  
  
A wave of Harry's raw magic had shattered all the windows in the house.  
  
And Vernon had paled, then went purple and yanked Harry's arm hard enough to dislocate it and threw him into his cupboard. Harry had smashed his face into the wall and broke his glasses.  
  
And now Harry was sitting on his bed- if you could call it that- shaking with grief for the parents he never knew and pain and afraid to even let out a whimper in case his uncle came back.  
  
He stared at the boy Infront of him. His only friend and protector. The only person he felt safe with. A boy who seemed frozen in time, stuck in a 12-year-olds body from the 1940s  He stared at those hauntingly blue-grey eyes and said: "I don't know how much more I can take."  
  
The boy continued staring back at him, impassive and constant and then took a deliberate step towards him, somehow not needing to bend down in the small confines in the cupboard, and sat down next to Harry.  
  
The boy didn't say anything to Harry and Harry didn't say anything to him, they just continued staring at each other and Harry wondered who this boy was, why he only showed up now, why he only said happy birthday, and why did he seem so strangely familiar? As if Harry had seen him once behind a strange green light and a cold, high laugh.  
  
But most importantly Harry wondered, how did the boy understand what Harry was going through? What kind of torment had the boy faced?  
  
When Harry awoke, he was tucked beneath his covers, his shoulder set and painless and his glasses repaired.  
  
The next night he dreamed about haunting blue-grey eyes and an orphanage where no one was like him at all, and children who hated him and called him a freak. Harry stayed with him the whole time and later sung the boy a lullaby he faintly remembered from a woman with red hair. The boy stared at him and said thank you and that he'd never forget.  
  
The boy in this dream was more lonely than Harry for on his birthday there was no boy out-of-time, wishing him a Happy birthday and being his silent protector.  
  
***  
"Happy Birthday"  
  
Harry stopped blowing out the eleven candles on his makeshift cake in the dust and looked up at the boy with a smile. The boy smiled softly back and then pointed at the door moments before it was knocked down in an almighty boom, waking everyone in the hut.  
  
Harry jumped up and ran back only to be stopped by a soft hand on his shoulder. Harry sighed at the feeling of a hand on his arm and momentarily forgot about the man at the door and Vernon's crazed shouts as he stared at amazement at the boy. This was the first time in his memory that he could remember someone touching him without the intent to hurt and Harry found himself lost in those blue-grey eyes that seemed strangely alight with happiness as the boys head tilted encouragingly towards the man who had just come in.  
  
Harry turned around to catch the words "Harry, you're a wizard." and Harry suddenly understood what he could do, why his relatives were scared why they hated the word magic, everything started to make sense and he had never felt such happiness. And yet the boy still continued to be a mystery and perhaps Harry had felt even greater happiness- every time he looked at the boys' eyes and felt safe.  
  
***  
Harry ran into the cavern too focused only on Ginny, Ginny and oh god she still there she's still alive to notice the beautiful chamber around him and the 16-year-old boy beside her, trapped in time just like another boy he knew. He dived beside her, wand rolling out if his hand as he fluttered over Ginny, knowing he had to do something _now_ but having no clue _what_. He glanced up wildly in desperation and found someone standing next to him and started to say "Please help me, she needs -" only to trail off in shock as he stared at blue-grey eyes. The blue-grey that haunted all his dreams and nightmares and kept him safe, *safe* and god there was the boy who looked out of time in old woolen Hogwarts robes.  
  
The boy in front stared back at him too and mumbled to himself "I saw you in the orphanage once." and as those eyes looked back at Harry, he saw that yes, this was the same boy, but _wasn't_ at the same time.  
  
The stared at each other, in an impasse for a moment, both unwilling to move, both knowing they knew each other somehow, but a small whimper from Ginny drew Harry's attention to her and the moment was broken.  
  
When Harry looked up again those blue-grey eyes were twisted with a sneer as the boy said: "You can't help her now, it's too late."  
  
Later that night as Harry lay in the infirmary, Harry desperately clutched at the knowledge that his blue-grey eyed boy was different. They weren't the same. He- He wasn't Voldemort. He couldn't be.  
  
And yet Harry felt cold when he fell asleep.  
  
***  
Harry woke up in a sweat, his vocal cords feeling mangled as though he'd screamed Cedric's name for hours. The blinding green light appeared every time Harry closed his eyes, merging with the memory of a cold, high laugh and his mother's scream and the whispered command of "Kill the spare."  
  
"Happy Birthday." came a voice from the corner of the room, and Harry didn't want to look up, he couldn't, after seeing those red, red eyes, mad and insane and how could blue-grey ever turn into that? And yet, he found himself looking at the small, 12-year-old boy sitting in the corner of the room, looking at him sadly. The boy who had seemed so old to his young self suddenly seemed so young and fragile and how could Harry hate the boy in front of him? The one who embraced, him, gave him clothes, fixed his injuries and had shared his joy at discovering the wizarding world?  
  
Harry sighed and looked at those sad blue-grey eyes who looked as though they had seen the worst the world had had to offer and yet still and walked out of it and Harry patted the bed beside him.  
  
The boy closed his eyes and dropped his shoulders, almost as if in relief and clambered onto the bed next to him, body small and gangly and how had Harry never noticed how thin the boy was?  
  
Harry stared at the slop his aunt had 'generously' given him, which he had shared with Hedwig and looked at the boy who sat next to him, who looked back with equal intensity. Harry sighed again and said  as he lied down "Did they not feed you well in the orphanage, Riddle?"  
  
Harry didn't get an answer. He never did.  
  
But he felt as the boy softly lay down beside him and wrap his arms around him, like Harry was 5 again and in desperate need of the knowledge that someone, _anyone_ cared for him.  
  
Harry slept without nightmares that night.  
  
And when he woke up he knew that his Riddle, who had cared for him and comforted him on all his birthdays was not the same Riddle that had held him in that accursed graveyard and tortured him. He wondered how that was possible and decided that it didn't matter.  
  
His Riddle and his blue-grey eyes was the only thing that mattered.  
  
When Dumbledore asked him at the beginning of the term whether Harry wanted to tell him something, he never once thought of telling him about his boy.  
  
***  
"Happy Birthday"  
  
Amidst all the Horcrux hunts and snatching sleep whenever he could Harry had forgotten what day it was.  
  
There at the edge of his bed was perched the same boy that had visited him for as long as he could remember on his birthday and Harry wondered if he would ever see the boy again. If he would survive another year. And whether the boy would die along with him.  
  
Harry softly maneuver this legs under his make-shift bed, careful not to wake Hermione, who deserved every bit of peace she got.  
  
"Hey," Harry whispered, his voice soft and rough from sleep. The boy smiled slightly and nodded back, his beautiful blue-grey eyes sad and broken.  
  
Suddenly the boy froze, and Harry realised that with his movements, his shirt had fallen open and revealed the locket that hung around his neck. Harry watched the boy, suddenly wary of him like he hadn't been for years as the boy extended a trembling hand, his blue-grey eyes wide and fearful as his hand came closer and closer to the locket.  
  
The boy suddenly looked at Harry and drew his hand back and Harry suddenly realised what he had been too afraid to see before.  
  
"You're a Horcrux," Harry whispered. Less of a question and more of a statement and those sad, sad blue-grey eyes looked at Harry and Harry suddenly realised that the boy had known that he would die long ago, and had yet stayed by Harry after all those years.  
  
Riddle nodded, a single tear escaping down his cheek. He looked so yeah and small. A 12-year-old boy trapped ageless in time, knowing they were going to die.  
  
And Harry suddenly knew with absolute certainty that this was the last time he would ever see the boy. The boy wouldn't survive to Harry's birthday next year, if Harry survived that long that is, because Harry had to kill the boy too. God his friend, his companion, his protector, a Horcrux. Harry choked.  
  
He felt tears skidding down his cheeks as he thought of his first friend, his silent protected, the person he always knew protected him without reason and Harry suddenly wanted to know why. But he couldn't. This was the last time he would see this boy that helped him so much, and Harry felt himself breaking at that knowledge. The knowledge that the boy Infront of him was going to inevitably die.  
  
That night he sat with the boy in his arms and for the first time, stayed awake all night with him, and watched him fade away with a sob when morning came  
  
When Harry destroyed the locket he wondered if he had just killed a different version of his boy with blue-grey eyes. He wondered if it's screams were actual pain. He wondered whether that blue-grey eyed young boy inside of him would feel that pain when Harry died to kill him.  
  
***  
It was1998 and the battle of Hogwarts was almost at its end. Harry could feel it in the adrenaline rushing through him as he stared at Voldemort Infront of him. They were somewhere near the top of the school, in the rafters. There was nothing stopping them now, no death eaters, no Horcruxes (Harry shuddered as he remembered the young boy at kings cross station with Dumbledore, the one who looked at him with a smile, who had been sitting in a bench, beside the train while he and Dumbledore walked and talked. Without thinking Harry had rushed to the boy and hugged him, filled with regret and pain and he had turned to Dumbledore and begged him to take the boy to a proper afterlife. Harry had stared at Harry and had asked him whether he knew what the boy was. Harry had nodded numbly and had whispered "He came to me every year and made sure I had hope. He made sure I was okay" and Dumbledore promised to see Riddle on his proper way) and yet when Harry looked at Voldemorts blood-red eyes all he could see was the soft blue-grey that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. He wondered whether any of that blue-grey was hidden by the red.  
  
It was all he could see when Voldemort hesitated again and again when he cast dark curses, which gave Harry time to move fully out of the way.  
  
And somewhere in the process of the fight, Harry realised that when they'd killed the Horcruxes, his boys' memories had fused with Voldemorts ones. And here was Voldemort, who could kill him with one blow, who had nothing distracting him or in the way, _hesitating_ when casting.  
  
And so Harry asked the only question he'd wanted to ask since he realised who the boy really was.  
  
"Why?"  
  
And Voldemort slowed, obviously realising what the question related to because he said, with a self-hating smile "Because I couldn't bear to see another child suffer like me, no matter who they were."  
  
Harry had never known how much red eyes could look blue-grey.  
  
"Thank you," Harry said back, his voice a whisper, floating on the screams outside that seemed years away. "Thank you for saving me."  
  
Voldemort smiled the same smile again and Harry realised that they hadn't shot any curses at each other since they began talking. "And look where that got me," Voldemort said with a scoff, gesturing down at himself and Harry.  
  
"It had to be this way."  
  
"I know."  
  
They stared at each other again and Voldemorts eyes looked so blue-grey.  
  
Harry smiled at him sadly and said "Happy Birthday. For all the ones you never had anyone to tell you."  
  
Voldemort looked at Harry, eyes dark and weary and sad. Harry realised that in the course of the conversation they had moved closer to each other until less than a foot separated them.  
  
"I wish we had met under different circumstances." Voldemort sighed and Harry cacked an eyebrow, the moment broken. "What, with less murder on your hands?"  
  
Voldemort barked out a laugh, shocked and pleased at once "I suppose so Harry. I suppose so. But I think we'll find each other again. Perhaps under different names, and with a different face, but we will."  
  
Harry nodded up at him with a small smile. "I look forward to it." and reached out to grab Voldemorts arm. "Are you ready?"  
  
"As I'll ever be."  
  
And Harry flung them both off the roof and began fighting with him anew while tumbling to the ground.  
  
***  
2038  
  
Henry was going to be late. Late to his own goddamn birthday party. Henry struggled to untangle his earphones from his hand as he dashed out of his parents' house. God stupid wires, stumped technology. He sometimes felt as if he belonged in a world where people still wrote with quills on parchment and used fireplaces for heating.  
  
He cursed again, looking down at his hand, and trying to simply yank them off an-  
  
Henry going himself on the pavement, with a boy on top of him. And suddenly he was assaulted with images of blue-grey blue-grey and oh god he could _swear_ he had seen those eyes before somewhere. The boy stared down at him with equally wide eyes as they lay on the pavement, not caring as others walked passed them with curious glances.  
  
"I've finally found you" the boy, whispered, in a half confused daze, and Harry understood because he felt like he'd been looking for the boy his whole life too.  
  
Henry whispered, somehow knowing it was important "It's my birthday."  
  
The boy smiled at him, and it felt like coming home.  
  
"Happy Birthday."  



End file.
